Pointless homework - WWYD?

[EvilTwins]

DTDs are in yr 7. One gets endless amounts of homework (the other doesn’t) and much of it feels a bit pointless. Today, she told me she has a 3 week history project for which she has to “make something” to do with castles - she can make a cake or a model or a mood board with lots of pictures. I asked her what The actual learning in the project is and she doesn’t know. Last week, she was given a project where she had to do a presentation about herself. That’s for study skills, and they are focusing on the presentation aspect. Her sister does the same subjects (different teachers) and did not have the same homework - hers was to practise the presentation skills, rather than spend hours doing a pointless PowerPoint.

Homework should be to either consolidate learning, extend learning or prepare for a lesson (or test) Making a model of Lincoln Castle out of fudge does neither of those things.

WWYD? Contact School? DTD2 could be spending her time so much better.

Parents (and kids) often complain if homework is a succession of boring worksheets.
I find that on homework you can't win.

Set exam prep - some parents complain

Set research - some parenta complain because it's not even teaching

Set some reading - some parents complain that it's not their job to get their child to read

Set spellings - some parents complain because they haven't got time to sit and do spellings with their child. Why can't it be independent.

Set finish off essays - some parents complain that it isn't proper homework (i never understood that one)

Set independent tasks - some parents complain tjat it isn't engaging and it's not their job to tell their child to do homework. If miss/sir made the work exciting then the children mught actually want to do it

Set something creative- some parents complain that thry hate it and it has no value

Set an extended piece - some parents complain bevause how is it right to expect their child to fit in 30 mins of writing in their week.

Don't set homework weekly - some parents call up SLT to complain that their child isn't being challenged.

Set easier chunked worksheets to review material - some parents complain because their child is too clevwr for the homework

Set revision - some parents conplain because it can't be proven and anyway childreb should do that anyway on top of homework

There's no pleasing everyone all of the time so we aim yo please some people some of thr time.

I couldn't be a teacher.
All those parents being experts because they were a child once and have a couple of children at school!

Maisy you forgot

Set homework weekly - some parents complain that you are setting too much homework

Blimey tonight religous studies

"write about your beliefs and why you hold them and then compare your beliefs to those of another religion"

DD is agnostic and told me she was going to compare her beliefs with HIndus because they have lots of Gods - bet it was an interesting few hundred words

lists That's a good homework - directly related to RE, gets them thinking, and a good quality writing task too.

listsandbudgets
Sounds perfectly reasonable and very interesting to me.
I love reading those types of pieces from students. Often some are insightful with wisdom beyond theit years. Others are odd but offer a new tale I'd never have thought ofm

of course you shouldn't set a homework purely for its crafty appeal if it has no educational value for your subject

Given that the 'castle' range of options posted by the OP includes making a cake and a mood board, I don't think that historical detail and accuracy is high on the list of expectations.

I agree its a good homework, just did make me smile to wonder what she may be writing. I sneaked a look and discovered from this small extract that...

"Hindus are like agnostics because they each have a favorite God and often ignore some of the others because theyre not sure they agree with what they stand for. This means that really they' re agnostic too about some bits of their religion"

( apologies to any Hindus reading this for this interesting interpretation of their religion!!) I will be very interested to see what marks she gets

Pah. At least the craft homeworks are normally fairly flexible - eg you are not forced to bake a cake or do something in papier mache, you can choose how you represent whatever you have been asked to do. I normally let them do the bare minimum on the craft side and then produce a huge amount of unasked for notes to go along with it to explain it. That way, the teacher cannot possibly accuse them of lack of effort or failure to understand the topic, and I feel they haven't wasted their time... They've never been told off for doing this - normally they get nice comments on their written work! As for parents doing their kids' craft homework work for them... you're the cause of the bloody problem. If parents didn't do their kids' homework for them, then teachers' expectations would be more realistic!

(Ps "them" = my children!)

OP I think DD"s geography teacher is a mumsnetter! Me "DD do you have any homework?" DD, " Yes, I have to build a volcano, do a write up about it and a presentation to the class, but I don't have to do a PowerPoint!" Me .

I niavely thought teachers could tell when parents did the work for their kids or not and then I learned they either couldn’t tell - which isn’t great.....or they didn’t care - I’m not sure which is worst. They did like lots of impressive art displays though, was that the most important thing?

A round tower - otherwise known as a toilet roll - has something to do with castles. Draw in an arrow slit and cut out some crenellations and Bob's your Uncle . You could then write about how castles developed and when and why they started to build round towers instead of square, talk about, eg, Rochester Castle and why it has one round tower, discuss arrow slits and crenellations, what sort of roofs castles had, how you can see evidence of this when looking round old, ruined castles, etc, etc... That way, you have spent 5 minutes on the model and loads of time on showing a bit of what you know or have found out about castles. If you've clearly spent ages researching the hidden meaning of your toilet roll, the teacher will be too embarrassed to tell you off for making too little effort with a toilet roll!

"kokeshi can I make a guess and say that you know nothing about castles? The way a castle is constructed in integral to its defense - curtain walls, arrow slits, arch design, foundations, situation, moat. "

I know plenty about castles, thanks. And it is perfectly possible to learn about castle structure without spending hours and hours engaging in junk modeling. You can draw all of the above on a diagram or picture, and add labels explaining the function of each part.

Nobody wants these crappy bits of craft which gather dust and end up in the bin (and waste valuable study time).

Let the ones who are creative do it if they want, but give options for the others, such as a labelled picture or even an essay. It's the end result that matters, i.e. understanding the different aspects of castles, why they were built where they were, how they developed, etc. How the kid learns about them should be a matter of choice.

OP I think I have got it, Pengggwn are you DD's geography teacher? . If so, she loves your subject and was suitably excited about this project, (she will be less excited over the next 3 weeks when she is trying to do it!). .

noble
I love a good moodboars homework.
They're great for GCSE literature revision.

I've set some great ones (well ones that saw great homework handed in)

• Moodboars tracking a protagonist througu the text (one students watercoloured the background so each point in the book was a colour linked to hia state of mind)
• Moodboard on set themes eg. Violence in Romeo and Juliet, 3 poems about soldiers from the anthology etc

They have to include keyy ideas that would gain marks, quotations, links to context

Then in class they swap moodboards and use them as a revision resource to peer cosch their topic so both people in the pair end up with 2 sets of revision notes. It's a good way of developing knowledge retrieval.

Don't get me wrong, some creative homeworka can be shocking and have no value but they can be done well.

Our year 7 motte and bailey castle was a masterpiece. A masterpiece I tell you. And the cake blood cell. And the sponge sperm. I learnt loads 😄

I think of a mood board as one of those arty collagey things that interior designers make. I'd love to see what a mood board for English Lit looks like. Maisy - care to share a picture?

TeenTimesTwo
They can be as arty or as basic as the student likes. Personally, i hate scrappy cut ans paste work so I only set them with classes i know will do them well and won't hand in garbage.

Some of my English Lit ones were quite collagey but one student once did a flowchart showing how all the main ideas, themea and characters linked in a massive web and then glued image he printed off the internet onto it. I thought that was really cool.

One made paper puppets for the soldiers in Exposure and wrote quotations on them.

Another found images and arranged them like a typical art mood board and wrote the quotations around the edge of the corresponding image.

One person printed images of the characters out onlike and then linked them to every other character.

One did a sketchnote (I really want to learn how to do this but don't have the skill)

One went on an app (Typorama or Adobe or sometbing) and made cool images with an image in thr background and then the quotations layered over the top. They arranged them by character.

What I would say is that I'm always clear on the point of homework e.g. this week your homeqork will develop your analysis, this week you are revising for a quiz, this week you are doing a summary moodboard because it's important to see how different elements of thr text link together to gain marks on this assessment objective, this week you are making flashcards to use for knowledge retrieval as speedy knowledge retrieval is key for the exam. I also would rather not set homework than set pointless homework, which is why I think students buy into it.

maisy I don't wish to poke fun of your typing and mine is notoriously awful but I am so tickled by the idea of moodboars

On a separate note, recent Ofsted weren't keen on my students' 'untidy' exercise books (these were set 8 of 9!). Ermmmm... hello , those are MINDMAPS and annotated STICK ROMEOS. Bastards.

piggy
Laugh away. Since the android update my keyboard is rubbish and i hate how it works

Ofsted and book scruitinies can bite me. My gcse classes have filled a book already. I don't give a damn if it's colourful and full of mindmaps etc. They've done the required assessments. Ot's just they write so kuch between them their books look sparse on extended written work. My question to anyone is 'so wjat you're telling me is tjat my students should write less so their books look bettwr to someone who know nothing about teaching my subject?' And at that point they shut up.

DS2 was set a GCSE PE HW to make a joint!
I'm a bit worried about this school.. Is it in Colorado?

I hear ya maisy

Mine have nearly filled a book ,too, btu apparently 'hadn't done much work' wtf??